phantom-tollboothWhen I was kid…other than the aformentioned love of GI Joe, my other main source of entertainment came from sports; baseball and soccer, specifically.  Whenever I had a book report due, I would make my dad take me to the library so that I could find the next in a seemingly (to my nine year old mind) never ending line of baseball biographies.  I read books about every conceivable player you can imagine.  Jackie Robinson’s autobiography remains one of my all time favorite books (and even if you don’t like baseball, it’s a great book), and I fondly remember reading about Ted Williams, Mel Ott, Whitey Ford…just way too many to name.

The Corona Public Library is not a great bastion of printed texts and, so, I did eventually exhaust its collection of books about baseball players.  I soon turned to fictional childrens books about baseball, but I found them either poorly written or not actually about baseball.

Dejected, I found myself at a school book fair and happened upon a book whose cover featured a boy and dog with a clock on his side.

At this point in my life, the only real piece of fantasy that I loved was Peter Pan, but I chalked it up to an aberration of my young mind.

I’m not sure why I felt attracted to The Phantom Tollbooth.  It really was unlike anything I had ever read.  For whatever reason, I got the book and started it that night.

I couldn’t put it down.

Probably, and this is based on my poorly conceived notions of 9 year old psychology, I connected with the character of Milo.  I didn’t have a terrible childhood.  I mean, we all go through shit as kids, and in fact, a lot of the really bad shit that happened to me occurred after I read the book.  But I had sometimes wondered what it would be like to just go off and disappear.

I remember reading the book…the first time I had ever read anything in this way…and imagining myself as the boy who, inexplicably, finds a small car and a tollbooth in my room and quickly enters another world.  It was probably the first time where I really understood the power of the written word; its ability to transport a person into any possible existence, even if for a little while.

The book even changed the way in which I approached my other early fantasy love.  I re-read Peter Pan after that and, I think, started to understand what it was that Barrie was doing with his own story about children transported into another world.

My hope is that I can pass The Phantom Tollbooth onto my kids without it being co-opted by hollywood.  There is an animated version in existence.  But it was made by Chuck Jones.  As far as film versions go, it can’t be improved upon and, anyway, its Chuck fucking Jones!

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